Adobe have recently released the Touch Apps family, a compilation of six, tablet optimised apps which allow creatives to produce work on the go and share via the Adobe Creative Cloud. I had my eye on these apps long before their recent release, the pricing seemed fair and the products were looking very tasty, especially Ideas and Proto.
When release day came I immediately made my first purchase. Adobe Ideas, a vector drawing program on-the-go from the creators of the great Illustrator package.
First and foremost the interface seemed non-intrusive and very tidy, this was a big plus for me, the actual drawing was fluid too, regardless of whether I was using a stylus or a finger.
Disappointment soon raised its ugly head when I started with my first “idea”. Typically with illustration I would do a rough outline on a top layer and fill/shade on the subsequent layers below, it makes sense right? Unfortunately Adobe didn’t foresee this and only provided us with one layer. One layer for a commercial drawing application? Seriously? With Adobe Ideas you get one active layer to draw on and one bottom layer to place an image and trace around. Personaly I would swap the photo layer for another active, drawing layer. If I had to trace around an image I would surely do it in the studio instead of on the move. The layers panel is designed perfectly for adding multiple layers so it’s possible it will make an appearance in a future update. Honestly though, why cripple a solid app by leaving out such a fundamental function?
Speaking of leaving out fundamental features, so I finished my first drawing and I wanted to send it to my colleague. Where is the share button? Where is the export button? Where is the ability to save my work in a universally recognised file format? Nope, not with Adobe Ideas, it’s either upload your work to the Adobe Creative Cloud or nothing. Surely this goes against the notion of producing “ideas” on the fly and actioning them. I uploaded my artwork to the Cloud and found the download link, brilliant, soon I’ll be able to forward my friend an SVG, or so I hoped.
What on earth is a “.idea” file format? no idea, but that’s the only option I have. So what do I do with this pointless, locked-in file format? I need to download the Adobe Ideas plugin for Adobe Illustrator of course, does it work with CS3… Nope, does it work with CS4… Nope. Kill me!
Seriously Adobe why make it so unbelievably difficult, I can’t share my work and I cant edit or re-save it.
Let’s return to the drawing aspect of Adobe Ideas. What brushes are on offer I hear you ask, is there a nice variety of predefined brush types similar to Autodesk’s SketchBook? Nope. With Adobe Ideas you get the ability to scale the width and opacity of the default circular brush, there are no paint or pencil effects.
A feature I do like however is the ability to import colour palettes from the Adobe Creative Cloud, you can create these colour palettes with the Touch App Adobe Kuler and they work very well in Adobe Ideas.
In conclusion I’m seriously disappointed with Adobe Ideas, it can’t compete with what’s already on the Android Market as its limited functionality, non existent sharing options and minimal toolset leave it a crippled commercial product. Had it included a few extra drawing layers, a small brush selection and an export button, this review would be entirely different.
For the record, I am currently testing Adobe Proto and I’m finding it to be instantly usable and great fun.
Adobe Ideas: 4.5 / 10
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